Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2024

Mr BURKE (Watson—Minister for the Arts, Minister for Home Affairs, Minister for Cyber Security, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and Leader of the House) (20:15): First of all, I thank the member for Wentworth for bringing this forward, for her advocacy—including the public advocacy—and for the occasion where I met with one of the examples of an antisemitic attack that the member referred to; I met with the member for Wentworth at that site with a local rabbi and the member for Kingsford Smith.

These are just normal streets that should be homes. In saying this, as has already been made clear and as I said privately to the member a little while ago, the government won't be supporting these amendments. In the first instance, on the concept of 'should we be involved in action', this bill is serious action.

This bill is still the strongest laws Australia has ever had in dealing with hate speech. These are the strongest laws Australia has ever had. The other thing I will add is I am glad we are now in a different debate about how we should improve our protections for people who are the targets of bigotry.

For nine years the argument from the government of the day was whether or not we should in fact be weakening our protections. We were told that that was in the name of freedom of speech and we were told that the right that mattered was the right to be a bigot. I'm glad we are in a different debate.

To move from a situation where hate speech is dealt with through a civil process to one where it is dealt with by a criminal process is a really big step. The government has two views. One is that we are wanting this bill to go through with the maximum majority possible.

I would add to that that we want to make sure everything is fully thought through, particularly a step shifting from having a debate for some time about where the civil lines should be to stepping into the criminal area—and, for some categories, in a way that has not even been covered in the civil process. I thank the member in one final part. While I say thank you, I get the disappointment in the actual position; I'm not pretending otherwise.

These amendments, when they deal with categories of hatred, deal with all categories. Just as in my speech earlier I spoke about a community that is not in large numbers in my part of Sydney, the categories that the member has referred to include some people who are well and truly covered in my part of Sydney but not hers; I just wanted to pay some respect to that.

I'll give the simplest example from my part of Sydney. If a woman catches the train from Punchbowl into the city, by the time she comes home she probably will have received abuse, but it is unlikely to have been racial abuse; it will have been abuse for her faith. We have moved the debate, as this bill already has—although the member for Wentworth is proposing taking it one step further—from the right to be a bigot to how we can improve the protections.

That is the right debate for this parliament to have. It is a fundamental change from where we've been at for a decade. We need to be really careful whenever we decide the criminal law is the answer for new offences.

What the bill has put forward is something where I have no doubt we are taking the right step. I do believe we're not in a position right now to be able to take the step that the member for Wentworth has advocated, so the government—certainly at the moment—is not in a position to support the amendment.